the life I lead
is the life I read...
the life I led
was the life I read...

05 November 2014

Poppies

Photo by Linda Rucker Woodall. 2014

Today there are news stories about the 888,246 ceramic poppies at the Tower of London, "Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red" by Paul Cummins. I showed the photos to my mother and was not at all surprised when she recited the John McCrae's poem.
I was surprised by an interesting variation in the wording. She replaced the line "to you from failing hands..." with "to you from foreign lands..."
Mother says she first read this poem sometime before she was nine years e.g. prior to 1936 in a booklet prepared to honor U.S. military from Leon County who had served in WWI,
She is unsure when she memorized the poem.
McCrae was a Canadian and his poem was used in both Canada and the USA to inspire enlistment in the military during WWII.
Was "foreign lands" a mere slip of her tongue or memory?
Or, was the poem slightly altered in the version she saw as a child or in versions she may have seen later as part of a campaign against American isolationism?

Like Emily Dickinson, I "hate housework, love literature, and have an intense interest in theology." I learned to read before I started to school and have been reading every moment since unless people or circumstances demand I do something else. "The Life I Read" is my mostly literary blog about the books I read or collect. My interests include Victorian literature, hymns written by women, children and the books they read, Hebrew poetics and the biblical Psalms, education, and literacy.

I'll include a bit of memoir now and then and maybe a recipe or two.

Unlike most English majors I have a very strong background in science. My career was spent as a clinical librarian and I still have an interest in medicine, neuroscience, the environment, and a host of other things.